‘Hal, if the King or I thought there had been one moment of impropriety we would be having this conversation in the dungeon, your rank notwithstanding.’ She took his hand and patted it. ‘And I would be the one holding the red-hot pincers.’
Managing a careful smile, he said, ‘I thank Your Majesty for her wisdom.’
Still holding his hand, she asked, ‘Hal, are you in love with my daughter?’
Caught completely unawares, he hesitated then said, ‘Desperately.’
The Queen said, ‘Oh, dear.’ She looked out over the city where as night fell lanterns were being lit in windows and on lamp-poles. Finally she said, ‘Come. Sit. This is my favourite time of day, though I’m rarely able to enjoy it. I’m usually busy getting ready for some state function or another.’ She smiled at him. ‘Now, let me tell you a story.’
She paused, gathering her thoughts, then said, ‘When I was my daughter’s age, I was Grand Duchess of Maladon. My brother was Grand Duke and unmarried. He met a young woman of property from Simrick and with sufficient standing that there would be no raised eyebrows when it was obvious he had married her to bolster our meagre treasury. Maladon and Simrick are merged states, two duchies wed ages ago out of battle.
‘My brother wished me wed in the most advantageous way and discovered the then-King of Roldem was looking for a bride for his eldest son. Rather than seeking a wife who would gain him political advantage, say a Princess of the Isles or Kesh, or a highly-placed Roldemish duke’s daughter, he sought a girl of rank whose alliance with Roldem would not unbalance a deftly-fashioned relationship between Roldem, the Isles, and Kesh. So, I was the choice. I had rank, not much of a dowry, but my brother’s alliance with Roldem would not cause conflict with any of the neighbours. When Carol and I were wed I had never laid eyes on him until the day of our wedding, did you know that?’
‘No, Majesty,’ said Hal quietly.
‘He was shy, though he had enough court experience to hide it.’ She looked Hal in the eye and said, ‘I’m too old to be coy, young Hal, so all I’ll say is our wedding night had its awkward moments. That was thirty-six years ago. I can’t imagine being married to anyone else, but once I did, so vary long ago. A dashing young captain of my brother’s horse guard. He flattered me and paid attention to me, ignoring far prettier girls. I was naive then, and couldn’t believe he didn’t fancy more than my rank and connections. I think he imagined I would bully my brother into letting me wed him, and be promoted to general or some such.’
Hal was about to protest, but the Queen cut him off. ‘Save your empty flattery, Hal. I know I was no beauty. My husband came to love me as I love him, despite our rather plain looks. So let me ask you, why do you love my daughter? Beauty, rank? Be honest. I will know if you are lying.’
Hal weighed his words, then said, ‘I’ve never met a woman besides my mother who was so … staunch, save perhaps the Lady Bethany of Carse. In the middle of the wilderness with men trying to capture her, hungry, wet and cold, Stephané did not complain. If anything, she worked to buoy our spirits. Yes, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve seen, and I know her rank is far above mine, but I’m as certain in my heart as I can be. Her courage is a match for anyone I’ve met, and she has a generous heart and a level head. She’s … wonderful.’
The Queen’s eyes glistened. ‘Oh, you poor boy,’ she whispered. ‘You know what you must do, don’t you?’
Hal hung his head, a pain growing within. ‘I know I must not indulge her whims.’
Now a tear ran down the Queen’s cheek. ‘And you would have made her such a good husband,’ she said softly.
‘I appreciate the thought. But I know she must marry to protect Roldem’s best interests, and I must return to Rillanon and see what duty my king has of me. At present I am a rustic duke without a duchy. Unless the King can negotiate—’
A strange keening filled the air, accompanied by a sensation akin to the moment before a lightning strike. The combination caused the hair on Hal’s arms to stand on end; then there was a sudden scream followed by men shouting and the sound of weapons being drawn. It came from the corridor leading to the great hall. Hal turned to the two soldiers and shouted, ‘Guard the Queen!’ Then he drew his sword and raced into the hall.
• CHAPTER NINETEEN •
Conflicts
CHAOS REIGNED.
Hal took a moment to comprehend the scene before him. Three rings of guards were standing in protection of their respective monarchs, while everyone who could get out of the great hall was scrambling for the nearest exit. The centre of the hall was a surging mass of movement that took Hal a moment to make sense of, for three alien figures stood in the midst of a litter of bodies.
Lord John Worthington stood motionless, in his hand a bloody knife. His son lay at his feet, his throat obviously cut as blood pooled around him. Lord John appeared transfixed, staring off into the distance, while Roldem’s palace guard formed a barrier between him and their King.
Then he saw that Lord John’s Isles and Kesh counterparts stood motionless as well, arms down and out before them, hands turned palms up, their eyes closed as if in prayer.
And in the centre of an invisible triangle between those three men raged something dark and murderous.
Hal could not quite make sense of what he was seeing. Whatever was forming there was a blur of motion and a shifting of light. Then Lord John and the other two advisors collapsed as one, and something was released.
The three shimmering silhouettes suddenly threw themselves at the three monarchs. Those not behind the wall of shields and swords screamed in agony as sudden wounds appeared on their bodies, or died silently from instantly killing blows. Blood fountained and spattered everywhere as the apparitions appeared moved around the room in a mad caper of murder, cutting and slashing in all directions.
Hal looked and found the Princess standing behind her father, Lady Gabriella and Ty and a dozen royal guardsmen. Jim and Franciezka were standing between that group and the Isles guardsmen protecting King Gregory, both of them had a pair of impressive-looking blades in each hand.
The Keshians were forming a wall of iron shields and scimitars around Emperor Sezioti who had drawn his ceremonial sword and looked poised to use it if need be. Hal tried to make sense of the mayhem, but had trouble getting the dark figures in focus.
They moved oddly, disjointedly, but even so, their progress was deadly. Blood was splattered on gowns and fine uniforms, giving the entire tableau an otherworld quality. Moreover, the keening sound the creatures made was unnerving. Hal fought down an urge to turn and run and took stock of his next move. His duty lay to his king and he knew he should move to defend Gregory, but his heart was Stephané’s and he wanted nothing more than to hurry to her side.
He judged his best choice to join with Jim and Franciezka. He ran past the royal dais and came to Jim’s side. ‘What are they?’
‘I’ve never seen their like,’ said the Kingdom’s spymaster. ‘But I’ve read about them. They are called death-dancers, and they are a bastard to kill.’
Looking at the way they flailed about, Hal saw a pattern emerging. ‘Then we’d best be about killing them as quickly as we can!’ He took three steps forward and as he had anticipated, what appeared as an odd man-shaped hole in the air swung a wide arc of what seemed to be a blade. Hal lunged and impaled it, felt the sword cut deep, felt resistance, then withdrew and knelt as a wildly swinging blade cut through the air where he had stood a moment before. A warbling cry, a sound nothing mortal could make, cut through the air, a sound of raw pain and anger.
‘Good!’ shouted Jim. ‘I think you’ve really annoyed it!’
The nearest death-dancer turned and seemed to be trying to locate Hal, who backed away ready to move in whatever direction took him away from this thing’s attack. He had run it through, somewhere in the lower torso, but it seemed merely agitated, showing no sign of injury.
‘How do you kill one of these things?’ Hal yelled.
&
nbsp; ‘I don’t know, but I do know you can’t let it cut you! Its touch is poison!’
‘Now you tell me!’
‘I’m not the one racing in there, am I?’ shouted Jim.
Hal played keep-away with the closest death-dancer and noticed another behind it. There was something dissimilar between the two, but he was too busy dodging to notice. He yelled, ‘Jim, what’s the difference between this one and the others?’
Jim tore his attention away from the closest as it lunged at Hal who barely leapt away in time. The flickering, featureless creature was difficult to see, and only the young duke’s quick reflexes saved him.
‘The other one has some sort of lash. Yours a blade, I think.’
‘I can’t see it well enough to hurt it!’ Hal shouted. ‘It’s like fighting in the dark.’
A noble on the other side of the room, one of the visiting Kingdom lords, screamed and clutched at his cheek as the lash from the other dancer found its mark. He fell to his knees with blood running between his fingers, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed to the floor. Colour drained from his face, his forehead beaded with perspiration and he seemed to be fighting for breath.
A third death-dancer reached the line of shields protecting the Emperor and was repulsed by the sheer number of blows directed at it. Enough struck that it echoed the warbling cry of the one Hal had wounded and retreated.
Jim watched the frustrating combat, as Hal and Ty and the others defending the monarchs attempted to counter blows from enemies that were at best dancing shadows and at worst nearly invisible. Jim said, ‘We need to see them!’
Franciezka said, ‘I have an idea!’ She turned and for a brief moment thought about dragging the King and Princess Stephané out of the door behind them, until she realized that corridor ended in a terraced garden. The only other way off that terrace was over a low stone wall, then a fifty foot drop to the marshalling yard below.
She ducked behind the throne and made her way through cowering nobles who were trying to stay as far away as possible from the murderous magical beings. A servants’ entrance was hidden behind a tapestry and she ducked through it. It was not an effective escape route for those in the great hall, as it immediately wound down in a spiral to the kitchen three storeys below: there would be a stampede on those stairs as people tried to get out.
She reached the kitchen and found the staff oblivious to the mayhem above as the chief cook oversaw a banquet for over five hundred guests scheduled to begin in less than two hours. Servants were already beginning to organize large trays of delicacies and cups were being arranged for wine service. Finally a baker’s apprentice noticed Franciezka and his eyes widened at the sight of this woman with her hair dishevelled and a large knife in either hand. Before he could speak, she shouted, ‘Flour? Where is the flour?’
The boy pointed as other eyes turned to stare at the intruder. She saw a five pound sack of flour sitting on a large rolling table and another unopened beneath the table. She threw both knives point down into the table and said, ‘Don’t anyone climb those stairs to the great hall until you’ve been told it is safe!’
She grabbed both sacks, one under each arm, ignoring the one that was spilling and hurried back up the stairs. A fit woman, she was nevertheless panting by the time she reached the top. How did the servants manage to make that climb dozens of times during a feast, she absently wondered?
She pushed her way past nobles crowding the entrance, and saw a young woman look at her with wide eyes. As that woman took a step towards her, Franciezka said, ‘Don’t go down there! There are more of them!’
The woman immediately pulled back and screamed. It was hardly noticed in the bedlam. Franciezka reached Jim and said, ‘Cut this one!’ as she dropped the unopened bag at his feet.
She reached into the open bag and took as large a handful of flour in it as she could, then shouted, ‘Hal! Close your eyes!’
Out of breath, perspiration dripping off his brow from dodging and slashing at the invisible creature, Hal shouted back, ‘Are you daft?’
‘Shield your eyes!’ Jim yelled.
Franciezka threw flour in the general direction of the shifting shape and the flour exploded into a white dusty cloud. Suddenly there was an outline Hal could see.
In a fury of blade work, he darted in and started cutting at the creature, retreating when necessary. Then another blade joined his as Ty leapt past Gabriella and stabbed the creature when it turned to confront Hal.
Quickly Hal and Ty forced the closest dancer to retreat, while some of the more bold guardsmen pressed forward now that they could make out the elusive assassins. Cut, slice, thrust, and the wailing increased until it approached an ear-splitting level.
Hal was puffing as he sought to press the first dancer, his face running with perspiration. Ty shouted, ‘Back. Catch your wind! I’ll hold him.’
An Isles guardsman attempted to take Hal’s place but his move was ill-timed and the dancer wheeled and sliced him across the throat. With a wide-eyed expression the guardsman went to his knees, his neck fountaining blood.
As the death-dancers got more injured they became more frantic, and more soldiers died. Jim moved to a position between the combatants and the now flour-covered Franciezka, shouting, ‘Look for an opening, and if you see one, get the King and Princess out of here!’
‘I will, but as fast as those things are moving, I doubt one will present itself!’
A bold Keshian legionary leapt forward, attempting a shield bash and was rewarded by the dancer closest to him falling back, its warbling cry tinged with outrage. For his pains, the Keshian soldier felt a cracking blow across his shield that sent a shock up his arm.
That presented the opening needed for Emperor Sezioti to be whisked out of the nearest entrance, into a safer part of the palace. The enraged death-dancer attempted to follow, but the determined legionary again bashed it with his shield and struck out with his scimitar.
Jim saw his grandfather trying to protect King Gregory and the Queen, and motioned toward the doorway through which the Keshians had escaped. Lord James nodded that he understood his grandson’s signal, and shouted orders to the guard captain to be ready to move towards that escape should the way open.
Jim saw there was something wrong with King Gregory. His right eye drooped and his right arm was dangling uselessly. Jim prayed the King hadn’t been struck by the death-dancer: from what he knew of them from a report Pug had penned years before, few survived such an attack. One who had was Ty’s father Tal, but he had the best magic and medicine the Conclave of Shadows could provide, and they had got to him quickly.
Jim looked around and saw that with the Keshians gone, save for the one brave legionary holding the door, two dancers were now attacking the Kingdom defenders. He turned his attention to the one facing Ty and saw Hal leap at it.
To no one in particular he said ‘Damn, those are some brave youngsters.’
‘Yes, they are,’ said Franciezka at his side.
He glanced at her and would have found her flour-covered visage amusing were it not for the circumstances. Indeed, flour was everywhere, in many places stained with crimson blood, producing an odd pink clump when the two substances combined.
The death-dancers were now frantic to the point of hurling themselves against whatever was before them, people, walls, furniture. Fatigued guardsmen were knocked into one another, and Jim shouted, ‘One of the king’s is going to die if we don’t end this soon!’
Suddenly a humming filled the room and Jim saw a figure standing in red robes on the other side. He held up his hands and the humming grew louder. The instant result was that the three death-dancers ceased moving but rather stood and vibrated as if trying to get into harmony with the note. It grew louder to the point of being painful and men screamed in pain and covered their ears.
Then suddenly the sound was gone.
And so were the death-dancers.
The three advisors were dead. And from prelimi
nary reports from the palace chirurgeon they were never truly alive. Whatever they would turn out to be, they weren’t human.
Ruffio sat in the middle of an ad hoc summit of representatives from the three nations. No monarch attended, for reasons of safety. Moreover, word was King Gregory had suffered some sort of seizure and was being attended by priests and chirurgeons.
As the most senior Roldemish noble, Duke Vladislas of Ansevat served as the informal leader of the conference. Next to him at the table sat Lord Jamison, Duke of Rillanon, flanked on one side by his grandson, Jim. Franciezka sat next to Duke Vladislas, and to her left sat the senior Keshian representative, Prince Jantashi, one of the Emperor’s many nephews.
Given the dire circumstances of the evening’s events, a great deal of wine was sitting on the table and had been partaken of freely. Jim said, ‘My lord Jantashi, if I may presume to offer a suggestion?’
‘Yes, Lord Jamison?’
‘Send word to the Jal-Pur and recall Lord Hazara-Khan. He was wrongly implicated in treason and is innocent of any such thing, but he is a valuable and talented servant of your Emperor, and you will need him in days to come.’
‘Odd to consider such a request from an enemy of the state as having any validity.’
‘Oh, I am many things, my lord,’ admitted Jim, ‘but an enemy of Kesh is not one of them.’ Glancing around the room, he said, ‘Our roles as agents of intrigue are coming to an end, Kaseem and myself.’ He neglected to mention Franciezka, assuming she’d prefer to make any such revelation on her own terms. ‘He is still too smart and talented a man not to utilize, and I will retire from public life at my king’s pleasure. But know I only sought to maintain peace between our nations, as difficult as that proved at times.’
His grandfather barely could contain his own anger, as he said, ‘And need I remind you, Prince Jantashi, that we had peace, nearly a century of it, except for those nasty little brawls in the Vale, until your nation launched a full-scale invasion of mine?’
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